Curtis Martin: Making Missionary Disciples

Curtis explains the mission behind FOCUS’ work, noting that there are Catholic churches close to most universities, and sometimes right on campus, but students aren’t walking to them.“So, FOCUS really exists to do the walking first,” he says. “We walk from the center out on to campus and meet students wherever they are, and through friendship, win them back and draw them home to the Catholic Center.”

Father Dave points out Curtis’ new book is bringing FOCUS’ methods and practices to everyone. Curtis responds, “The question was, if FOCUS is doing something on college campuses, what is it that they’re doing and could you do that in parishes, families, and wherever you are?”

Curtis breaks down their method of “Win, Build, Send.”

“Win, go and get into people’s lives personally. We tell our missionaries, go love college students by doing the things they like to do that are moral. So if they like music, go play music. If you find someone who likes to hike, go on a hike … whatever they wanted to do that was noble go do it, and in the midst of that, guess what happens? Amazing friendships. What do friends do? They introduce their friends to their other friends. As a Christian, the most important relationship in my life is Jesus Christ. You wouldn’t know me for very long and not know that I am Christian … so it becomes very natural to share these things. And in the midst of that you win people over.”

“This leads to the build. People start to ask, ‘How are you living?’ We’ll say we’re going to start studying Scripture together because ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. We’re going to teach you about Christ and he is going to teach you how to live. I’m learning with you. We don’t tell people what to do, we point them to the One who can tell them what to do. And we don’t say, ‘You should pray’ we say, ‘How about we go pray together?’ So we’re walking with them and we start to build people up.”

“Now that you have come to know Christ and entrusted your life to him, you have to go bear fruit … You have to have that second conversion: I’m willing to not only do anything to follow Christ, I’m willing to do anything to help other people follow Christ. That’s the send.” (Original Air 12-06-18)